Maddox Fears Aids In His Cancer Drugs

ATLANTA — Lester Maddox, the former segregationist governor of Georgia, fears he might have contracted AIDS from drugs he used to battle prostate cancer.

The 69-year-old real estate agent had injected himself with the blood- derived drugs up to 60 times a week for more than two years until recently when he learned they contain antibodies associated with AIDS and hepatitis.

He bought the drugs from a Bahamian cancer clinic that was closed two weeks ago after investigations showed the drugs were contaminated.

''If tests show that the vials I'm using have AIDS; then I've been injecting myself with AIDS,'' Maddox said Tuesday. ''That's frightening. That's the end of the road.''

Health officials in Atlanta, Florida and Washington, D.C., say that as many as 1,000 patients of the Immunology Researching Center of Freeport, Grand Bahamas, might have injected themselves with serum contaminated with AIDS and hepatitis.

One patient of the clinic was Ruth Carter Stapleton, former President Jimmy Carter's evangelist sister who died of cancer in 1983.

Maddox plans to be tested for acquired immune deficiency syndrome and to have his remaining vials of drugs analyzed within the next 10 days.

''I hope I don't have AIDS, I pray I don't,'' he said. ''But you don't know until you've been tested. It's a silent kind of disease that sneaks up on you.''

Maddox had been going to the clinic since May 1983. The center, closed July 17 by the Bahamian government, puts cancer patients on a regimen of injections that are supposed to bolster the body's immune system, which AIDS attacks.

''If you do that strengthen the immune system, you can fight off cancer, arthritis, lupus, probably even AIDS,'' said Maddox.

He said the clinic's treatment is effective but controversial. The treatment includes a diet of whole oats, seaweed, collard greens and Japanese radishes.

''Hundreds of people coming there were given a last hope for life,'' Maddox said. ''A woman I know was bedridden with cancer . . . in her last days. She's playing

golf and enjoying life now.''

The clinic had been hampered by an inability to get blood from the Red Cross, Maddox said, and wasn't able to adequately screen blood from other suppliers.

The director of the clinic, Dr. Lawrence Burton, denied Tuesday that the blood-derived drugs dispensed by the clinic were contaminated with AIDS. He also defended his cancer treatment, which the American Cancer Society lists as an unproven therapy.

Pathologists at a hospital in Tacoma, Wash., tested 18 vials of the clinic's serum that were turned in last month by two patients. Eight of the vials contained the AIDS antibodies; all had hepatitis antibodies.

The hospital gave some of the samples to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Scientists are still testing the samples and won't have results until next week, said CDC spokesman Chuck Fallis.

The hospital's finding triggered an investigation of the clinic by the Pan American Health Organization in Washington, D.C., and the Bahamian government. Dan Epstein, spokesman for the health organization, said the probe uncovered ''a lack of rudimentary precautions in the lab.''

Based on that finding and the AIDS scare, Bahamian Health Minister Norman Gay ordered the clinic closed, Epstein said.

Maddox, who in 1964 chased blacks out of his Atlanta restaurant with a pistol, said he has had seven other bouts with cancer since 1967, his first year as governor.

Georgia law prevented the governor from seeking re-election. He was elected lieutenant governor and served in that post from 1970 to 1974. Maddox ran for governor in 1974 but was defeated.